During the months that the Royal Commission was taking evidence, the nuclear tests maintained a high profile throughout the mainstream media, and many publications assigned reporters to attend the hearings. Journalists Paul Malone and Howard Conkey in a feature for the Canberra Times asked Ernest Titterton what was known about the plutonium contamination risks at the time of the experiments. In his typically cantankerous manner, referring to the 12 Vixen B tests, he asked them, ‘Wouldn’t you expect plutonium around the place? Of course there is plutonium around the place, it is always there, it was always expected’. He said that it had not been possible to go around and pick up every fragment of plutonium, some of which was not sufficiently radioactive to be reported. He maintained his nuclear warrior persona until the end, even as the truth about Maralinga was uncovered at last for the Australian public to judge.
11
The Roller Coaster investigation
The results from Roller Coaster show that the measurements made in the Vixen B trials underestimated the ground deposit of Pu by a factor of ~10 … Obviously this was known at Aldermaston in 1966 when the program for cleaning up Taranaki was being developed, but it was not conveyed to Australia.
John Moroney, unpublished aide memoire, 1992.
I was really angry when I read all the reports, then we got out there and suddenly found ourselves knee-deep in plutonium.
Peter Burns, part of the 1984 team of radiation specialists who surveyed the Maralinga test site, 2004.
We may never know the intent, but we do know the consequences.
Ian Anderson, on the Science Show, ABC Radio National, 1993.
Maralinga was uncovered incrementally. Bit by bit, as worrying details came to light, Australia’s citizens learned what had been done a generation earlier. It did not all come out at the Royal Commission, either. The last piece of the jigsaw – the extent of the contamination, and the fact that the British did not share what they knew about it – took a concerted effort by John Moroney, a once-loyal servant of the British tests who analysed the data, and a dogged journalist, Ian Anderson, who brought it to public attention.
Discovering the true nature of the plutonium tests at Maralinga was a significant and celebrated achievement. It required sophisticated journalism informed by a strong understanding of science and an ability to get at hidden information and make sense of it. Anderson’s story, ‘Britain’s dirty deeds at Maralinga’, which appeared in the British-based weekly magazine New Scientist on 12 June 1993, was considered to be a landmark story by both the experts who provided its source material and the peers of the journalist who wrote it. More than ever before, the story revealed the truth of the minor trials.
Anderson was Australian editor of New Scientist and a pioneering science journalist, loved and respected among his peers. His work on Maralinga was part of an enviable legacy. He was a leading contributor to the development of Australian science journalism, through his position at New Scientist, his foundation and leadership roles in the main professional organisation for science journalists and communicators, Australian Science Communicators, and in his initiation of ScienceNOW, the festival of new science held in Melbourne. In Anderson’s obituary in New Scientist in 2000 (he died prematurely at the age of 53), his close friend Tim Thwaites wrote, ‘No-one has contributed more than Ian to the promotion of Australian science and technology to the world. Through the excellence of his reports in New Scientist and other publications, he presented Australian research to an international readership’.
‘Britain’s dirty deeds’ earned Anderson two Michael Daley awards for science journalism and appears to have influenced the course of ministerial talks when Australia was negotiating with the UK for a monetary contribution to help clean up the Maralinga site. This story marked the first time that the extent of plutonium contamination at the desert test range was made public. It also exposed the fact that the British authorities had known the level of contamination and covered it up. The story contributed ‘moral pressure’ at a crucial moment, opening disturbing new information to public debate that raised fundamental questions about the nature of the Australia–UK relationship. Anderson’s story appeared at a crossroads moment in the history of the toxic old site. The story triggered a renewed media interest in this particular example of nuclear colonialism.
Anderson had a ready analogy when he discussed his story. When it was published, the Australian cricket team was playing at Lords in London in an Ashes series. He told listeners on several radio shows that Australia was facing ‘the old enemy in another arena’. The theme of ongoing battle between traditional adversaries was especially resonant since Anderson published his bombshell in a popular British publication with a large British readership. An editorial in the same edition substantively supported Anderson’s story.
As the Australian cricket team faced the bowling attack at Lords, Australia’s Energy minister Simon Crean and Foreign minister Gareth Evans were entering the finale of a long-running dispute to obtain funds for a large-scale clean-up operation at Maralinga. Archie Hamilton, the Conservative British minister of state for the Armed Forces, and others in John Major’s government, argued that their responsibility had been signed away in the 1968 joint agreement. Anderson’s story asserted that the Australian Government, when it signed this agreement, was not informed that the British test authorities knew Maralinga would remain toxic for tens of thousands of years into the future.
Like many influential stories, ‘Britain’s dirty deeds’ had a serendipitous beginning. Anderson took his car to Heidelberg Mitsubishi in Melbourne’s northeastern suburbs one day in early 1993. Scientist Geoff Williams, whose car was also being serviced, ran into Anderson in the waiting room. Williams was one of the small team of radiation specialists who had gone to Maralinga in 1984, the expedition that had led directly to the establishment of the McClelland Royal Commission later that year.
At the Heidelberg garage, Williams and Anderson, who knew each other from some long-forgotten New Scientist story, began chatting about Maralinga. Anderson had reported on Maralinga a few years previously, and Williams knew enough of Anderson’s work to trust he would understand the complicated material he discussed. He told him about some new safety trial data from the US that had implications for understanding the plutonium contamination at Maralinga. By the time Anderson drove his freshly serviced Mitsubishi home, he had the beginnings of the story.
Williams had suggested that Anderson contact his colleague and senior ARL manager John Moroney, who had inside information. Moroney had been studying for a masters degree in physics at Melbourne University under Professor Leslie Martin in 1957, when Martin was about to retire as chair of the Australian AWTSC. Moroney, considered an efficient, intelligent and scientifically literate young man, gave up his studies to join the AWTSC as secretary. He stayed until it disbanded in July 1973, becoming one of the world’s leading authorities on atomic fallout in the process. When Williams suggested Anderson talk to him in 1993, Moroney was head of the Radioactivity Section at ARL.
Several years before, the Royal Commission had provided a mechanism to call witnesses, review thousands of pages of documentary evidence and breach the persistent secrecy around the British tests. However, exhaustive as it was, it could not tell the whole story. In the early 1990s, ARL obtained newly declassified documents about radiological tests in the US known as Roller Coaster. The Royal Commission did not consider the Roller Coaster documents because they were not available when it sat.
The Roller Coaster tests had gone virtually unnoticed outside Nevada, and were not listed as part of the publicly available record at that time. Hardly anyone knows the name even now, and the tests are not mentioned in books about Maralinga. When the ARL scientists, and specifically John Moroney, started to look through the records they began to understand that radioactive contamination left behind at Maralinga was far greater than they had believed before 1984 when the Pearce Report was still considered accurate. The subsequent Royal Co
mmission, which owed much to the astonishing revelations of the landmark 1984 site expedition, received precious few British records about Vixen B, so while it did note Vixen B left significant contamination, the true extent of it remained unknown until Moroney’s later investigation.
Moroney was one of the few to recognise the significance of Roller Coaster, joint US–UK tests that were similar to Vixen B. The main difference was that during the Roller Coaster experiments a much greater effort had been made to accurately measure the level of plutonium contamination. The thoroughness of the Roller Coaster documents contrasted with the paucity of information for Vixen B – at least, the information made available to Australia. Moroney described the Roller Coaster data: ‘Typically, they are thorough records of the Operation, going into infinite detail’.
Moroney provided the data that made the New Scientist story possible, based on documents from the National Technical Information Service in Washington DC. He had been through each and every page of these mostly microfiche documents, recording and analysing as he went. Moroney analysed about 2500 pages of declassified nuclear contamination data from the US–UK Roller Coaster trials in Nevada (held in May and June of 1963, after the British had resumed weapons testing with the Americans). While some details of the tests remained classified (as Moroney said in a letter to Pat Davoren, ‘There are still wraps around the main core of Roller Coaster data, with a few bits sticking out for mere mortals like us to see’), he had enough to understand their significance. The Roller Coaster data enabled Moroney to make a detailed scientific case that the British atomic test authorities had knowingly left substantial and potentially dangerous amounts of plutonium on or near the surface in parts of Maralinga.
The Americans conducted a range of top-secret ‘safety trials’ that investigated the one-point problem that had sparked the British Vixen B program, in a program of what they called hydronuclear experiments. Many of these trials were conducted in the early 1960s at Los Alamos. Roller Coaster was part of this broad program but was conducted (with input and participation from AWRE personnel) in Nevada and specifically examined environmental dispersal of plutonium when simulated warheads were detonated using conventional explosives. Roller Coaster was made up of four trials, held on 15 May, 25 May, 31 May and 9 June 1963. The first two were atmospheric tests, similar to Vixen B (although the cloud created in the first did not rise as high as that in Vixen B). The other two were held in bunkers. In the atmospheric tests, most of the plutonium travelled downwind as an oxide aerosol, just like it did in the Vixen B tests. The Americans were surprised by how much plutonium contaminated the steel plate in several of the tests and thoroughly studied this phenomenon. This same outcome from the Vixen B safety trials became apparent only during the 1984 ARL trip to Maralinga, even though it was there to be seen in the immediate aftermath. The actual amounts of plutonium used in each of the US tests were still classified at the time of Moroney’s analysis, but he was able to postulate how much was used ‘with reasonable accuracy’ because of his knowledge of Vixen B: ‘The Roller Coaster data … and the … data for the five identified plumes at Taranaki agree very nicely, given the differences in the firings, and the span of cloud heights and wind speeds’. In other words, Moroney was sure that Roller Coaster and Vixen B could be usefully compared. While Roller Coaster and Vixen B yielded different official results, the American results were more robust and realistic. The Vixen B figures made no sense unless Moroney factored in a gross underestimate of actual contamination at Taranaki. When he saw what the data meant, he made his switch from stalwart AWTSC man to disillusioned critic.
The discrepancy could not be explained away by different ways of doing things, between countries and across the years. By the time the ARL scientists were on the ground at Maralinga in 1984, the measurement and analysis methods to which they had access were far superior to those available to Noah Pearce and his colleagues who prepared the AWRE report in 1968 that cleared the UK of any further responsibility at Maralinga. The ARL scientists used gamma ray detectors to measure a product of plutonium decay, americium-241, which could be extrapolated to give an exact measurement of plutonium. As Anderson explained in his story, ‘The British had to rely on alpha particle emissions from plutonium which are difficult to detect’. But, as radiation scientist Peter Burns also pointed out in the story, ‘They could have done radiochemistry analysis of the soil which would have given a more accurate reading of plutonium’. In addition, the British had had the results of the Roller Coaster trials, so they would have known the likely levels of plutonium.
Not long before his death in 1993, Moroney, who planned to write what he knew, prepared several aides memoire to this end. They reveal that he was always careful to ensure that the latter-day reader would understand the mindset of the times that led to the creation of the Maralinga test site. ‘A major ingredient in depicting the general background is to convey some sense of the perceptions of the period, which, I suppose, allowed these nuclear tests to be conducted essentially as military operations, with the expectation on personal compliance and commitment that this implies.’
A long period of analysis of the Maralinga site had ensued after the 1984 ARL visit. The ARL scientists discovered a major discrepancy between the levels of contamination claimed in the Pearce Report and what they found on the ground, sparking years of investigation that culminated with Moroney’s detailed examination of Roller Coaster records. The americium-241 levels obtained by the ARL scientists showed the Pearce Report data about plutonium levels were incorrect. Moroney’s analysis of Roller Coaster later confirmed that they were in error by a factor of 10. While the Pearce Report claimed that about 20 of the 22 kilograms of plutonium had been buried, an estimated 20 kilograms was later found to be scattered around the site.
MARTAC, set up in 1993 to oversee clean-up of contamination at the site, extended and corroborated the readings from the 1984 ARL visit and Moroney’s analysis. The MARTAC team found the ‘contamination of the lands consisted of fine particulate of plutonium and fragments of paraffin wax, lead, light alloys and plastic with plutonium plated on them’. In other words, the site was a dangerous mess. MARTAC also noted that ‘it was the experimental set-up of the Vixen B trials that made them the principal source of lasting environmental contamination’.
Moroney heard from Williams about the prospective New Scientist story and was keen to co-operate. By then he had been crunching the Roller Coaster numbers for a couple of years, and sending what he had found to his Australian Government contacts, notably Pat Davoren, then manager of the Test Site Management Unit of the Department of Primary Industries and Energy. He also started preparing a briefing paper in response to the developing New Scientist story. He noted that the ‘inadequacies and gross inconsistencies’ in the set of plutonium field data used for Operation Brumby ‘were not resolved between the UK and Australia at the time, even after extended re-analysis and debate’. This absence of proper contamination data for the site was a catastrophe. Moroney maintained that it was not a simple mistake. The Roller Coaster results meant that the ‘AWRE knew of … the error involved’, but these results ‘were the subject of military security at the time and not accessible to Australia’.
These errors resulted in considerable confusion and misinformation about plutonium contamination at Maralinga. The Roller Coaster trials gave Moroney the ammunition he needed to support the Australian Government in rejecting the 1968 agreement. In a letter to Davoren on 28 November 1991, Moroney gave his ‘fast first pass through the Roller Coaster information’. Before commencing RADSUR, the 1966 radiological survey, and Brumby, the 1968 clean-up, he concluded, the AWRE certainly knew that » α-survey [alpha-survey] monitoring of Pu [plutonium] fallout on soil can be expected to underestimate the Pu surface density by an order of magnitude, even when the survey is made in the day or so immediately following deposition; and
» less than 20% of the Pu used in the Vixen B trials can be expected to have remained in the debris
in the locality of the firing pads.
It follows from this that AWRE also knew that:
» all of the post-firing α-survey data from Vixen B trials were low by at least a factor of ten;
» the areas of Pu contamination at Taranaki to be cleaned up in BRUMBY were greater, by an order of magnitude, than as indicated by the results of the post-firing α-surveys; and
» the burial pits at Taranaki contained no more than 15% to 20% of the Pu used in the 12 firings.
Those few lines written to Davoren distilled what Moroney had deduced from the Roller Coaster pages. His analysis discovered the key to understanding what damage Vixen B had done. He subsequently supplied this information to Ian Anderson, and it provided the backbone for his article. Moroney’s analysis was later confirmed by MARTAC.
In his letter to Davoren, Moroney observed, ‘I know that the Pu survey work in RADSUR & BRUMBY had its problems, but I still find it galling that it was so bad that it couldn’t even pick-up an error of such huge dimensions’. Moroney signed off his letter with the handwritten words ‘good luck’.
The analysis showed that the Australian authorities had not possessed all the relevant facts before signing the 1968 agreement. The accumulated data from the 1984 expedition and from Roller Coaster data produced an irrefutable case for the British to help fund a major site clean-up. Simon Crean and Gareth Evans were armed with these facts as they prepared to negotiate with the British for compensation. Behind-the-scenes wrangling over this issue had been going on for several years, with expert input from Moroney. The Australian Government alerted the British Government that it had the Roller Coaster data in December 1991.
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